Cities in the U.S. and around the world are beginning to reopen after lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) could play a pivotal role in keeping people safe as they head back to work and start resuming their regular day-to-day lives. On May 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Quest emergency use authorization for its coronavirus test, which will make it possible for people to collect samples at home.

Last year, Google launched the beta of Currents, which was essentially a rebrand of Google+ for G Suite users, since Google+ for consumers went to meet its maker in April 2019. While Google+ was meant to be an all-purpose social network, the idea behind Currents is more akin to what Microsoft is doing with Yammer or Facebook with Workplace. To complicate matters, Google kept Google+ around, even after the launch of Currents, but in an email to G Suite admins, it has now announced that Google+ for G Suite will close its doors on July 6, after which there will be no way to opt out of Currents or revert back to Google+.

The Justice Department and nearly all state attorneys general have opened investigations into allegations that Google has broken antitrust laws. Google's shares were up 1.6% on the day. Google spokeswoman Julie Tarallo McAlister said the company continued to engage with the Justice Department and the Texas attorney general's office.

The Justice Department and nearly all state attorneys general have opened investigations into allegations that Google has broken antitrust laws. Google's shares were up 1.6% on the day. Google spokeswoman Julie Tarallo McAlister said the company continued to engage with the Justice Department and the Texas attorney general's office.

Contracts for a number of coronavirus data deals that the U.K. government inked in haste with U.S. tech giants, including Google and Palantir, plus a U.K.-based AI firm called Faculty, have been published today by openDemocracy and law firm Foxglove -- which had threatened legal action for withholding the information. Concerns had been raised about what is an unprecedented transfer of health data on millions of U.K. citizens to private tech companies, including those with a commercial interest in acquiring data to train and build AI models. In a blog post today, openDemocracy and Foxglove write that the data store contracts show tech companies were "originally granted intellectual property rights (including the creation of databases), and were allowed to train their models and profit off their unprecedented access to NHS data."

Facebook's photo transfer tool is now available globally half a year on from an initial rollout in Europe, the company said today. The data portability feature enables users of the social network to directly port a copy of their photos to Google’s eponymous photo storage service via encrypted transfer, rather than needing to download and manually upload photos themselves -- thereby reducing the hassle involved with switching to a rival service. Facebook users can find the option to “Transfer a copy of your photos and videos” under the Your Facebook Information settings menu.

All was well the first two months of the new decade before all hell broke loose, and while the global economy remains in various stages of lockdown and in recession due to you-know-what, the U.S. stock market indices have rallied to close to where they started at the onset of the year. Leading the charge in this new era are technology stocks -- specifically those helping organizations and individuals cope with shelter-in-place and work-from-home orders. Artificial intelligence (AI) was already a promising growth industry, but recent events have made the need for automation and efficient use of data more important than ever.

In India, it's Google and Walmart-owned PhonePe that are racing neck-and-neck to be the top player in the mobile payments market, while Facebook remains mired in a regulatory maze for WhatsApp Pay’s rollout. Google Pay had more than 75 million transacting users last month, ahead of PhonePe’s 60 million users, people familiar with the companies’ figures told TechCrunch. In comparison, SoftBank -backed Paytm's app saw 30 million transacting users last month and an average of 10 million users transacted each day, people familiar with the matter said.